Court affirms Paul Gillette murder conviction

An Amarillo appeals court has affirmed the 2012 murder conviction of Paul Gillette in the strangulation death of his wife, Sherri.

The Seventh Court of Appeals overruled Gillette’s appeal of his August 2012 conviction, concluding there was sufficient evidence to support a murder conviction and that jury instructions did not need to include consideration of lesser offenses of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide.

Randall Sims, 47th District Attorney, and Sherri Gillette’s father, Dwayne Herring, said they were glad to see the court uphold her murderer’s conviction.

“I know that all of us are happy with the results,” Herring said, referring to his family. “We’re very, very pleased. It just shows that the system does work.”

John C. Bennett, Paul Gillette’s appellate attorney, did not immediately return a call for comment.

Paul Gillette, now 51, pleaded not guilty to the murder outside the Gillette family home west of Amarillo.

A 47th District Court jury found him guilty and sentenced him to 45 years in state prison. The residential real estate developer testified he did not intend to kill Sherri Gillette, 44, but was defending himself when she attacked him with a ring of keys.

Potter County deputies discovered Sherri Gillette’s body inside her GMC Yukon in a locked, detached garage at the estranged couple’s house in the rural Eagle Tree neighborhood.

Authorities also found Paul Gillette huddling in the dark garage and took him into custody.

Sherri Gillette filed for a divorce from her husband in November 2009.

In his appeal, Paul Gillette claimed prosecutors failed to show he had intent or knowledge of wrongdoing when he killed his wife.

Prosecutors and their witnesses pressed a theory that Paul Gillette attacked his wife out of anger over an insurance agency she was attempting to win in the divorce.

A month before the slaying, Paul Gillette had filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan to repay more than $1.2 million in debts, court judgments and delinquent taxes largely with income from the agency.

A note at the scene, purportedly written by Sherri Gillette, said she planned to relinquish the insurance agency to her husband, Quinn wrote.

“However, fingerprints on the document matched those of the appellant, and the handwriting likened to his own, too,” Quinn’s opinion said.

Quinn’s opinion summarizes the prosecution’s evidence at length, including Paul Gillette’s utterance to Potter County deputies: “I’ve had enough.”

Evidence presented by prosecutors “provided the jury basis upon which to rationally conclude, beyond reasonable doubt, that appellant not only planned to cause but also intentionally or knowingly caused the death of Sherri,” Quinn’s opinion states. “That he may have claimed he acted in self-defense was a matter for the jury to consider. It was free to discredit his testimony, as it apparently did.”

Paul Gillette asserted that the jury should have been able to consider lesser offenses, including criminally negligent homicide, in determining his guilt. He claimed negligence because he did not seek medical attention for her once she stopped breathing and supported his argument with the fact that emergency responders attempted to resuscitate her.

But the appeals court opinion said Paul Gillette cites no evidence that his wife showed signs of life before, during or after the resuscitation efforts.

“Apparently, he would have us believe that the pronouncement of death by medical personnel somehow constitutes evidence that she was alive until that point,” Quinn wrote. “Nothing of record supports such speculation. Indeed, death occurs when one actually dies, not when someone formally pronounces the corpse dead.

“If this was not so, then we need only have medical personnel withhold pronouncing loved ones dead to keep them alive; oh, if that could only be.”

The appeals court sided with Paul Gillette on one issue, that the lower court’s judgment requiring him to pay attorney’s fees was in error, “because the record does not show that he had the ability to pay.”

Paul Gillette had a court-appointed attorney during his trial because he had been found to be indigent, Sims said.

Sims said it is difficult to get information about a defendant’s financial assets on the record during a criminal trial unless the trial itself deals with a financial issue.

The former real estate developer is incarcerated at the John M. Wynne Unit near Huntsville. He will not be eligible for parole until 2033, according to information from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Herring said he hopes the appeals court decision will close a chapter for his family.

Paul Gillette “is getting his justice now,” Herring said.

Paul Gillette also is serving a concurrent 24-month federal prison sentence imposed in October 2012 by U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson, who found he had violated the terms of a previous supervised release from federal prison by committing the murder.

In the federal case, Paul Gillette pleaded guilty to structuring a cash deposit to avoid bank IRS reporting requirements. He served time in a federal prison from 2007 to 2009.

The deposit was one of several Paul Gillette acknowledged making, in amounts less than the IRS reporting threshold of $10,000, from more than $650,000 he received in cash for a lot and home construction at his Falcon Club residential development.